Sword from the Stone
by The Dragon Politic
Summary: An artifact straight out of Arthurian Legend is unearthed during repairs to the battle-shattered Ministry atrium. As whispers of "Voldemort" hiss in every shadowy corner, the Golden Trio are forced to take on new roles: General, Prophesier…King. Y6 AU.
1. The Letter from Dumbledore

_A Prologue_

In Surrey, in early June, Harry decided he was no longer sorry for shattering every magical instrument in Dumbledore's office. In fact, his only regret was that he would have to wait until September to do it again!

He stared down at the parchment in his hands—the last letter he would receive that summer—and growled. It wasn't even a good letter. The quill had been a bit dull, sending bits of ink spatter around as the headmaster scrawled out his short message at clearly breakneck speed. The ink hadn't even been properly blotted. To top it all off, it was singed from Fawke's fiery entrance. The bird had nearly given him a heart attack when it made its rapid delivery drop onto his bed and burned back out of sight,leaving him to hurriedly douse the letter's glowing edges before his sheets caught fire with him still tangled in them.

He realized he had clenched his fists with the letter trapped within them. He loosened his grip and flattened the parchment to read it again with the thought that, somehow, he had gotten the message all wrong.

_Harry,_  
_There is no time. There is . . _(Harry frowned at the two drops of ink that betrayed the writer's hesitation)_ a crisis. The Order cannot watch over you. Stay indoors at all costs. Trust nothing. I've blocked Wizarding mail from Privet Drive, but a Muggle letter could be cursed. We will come once we can._  
_Stay safe, my boy._  
_A.D._

A crisis, the letter said. What crisis! Was it something so horrible that Dumbledore decided he hadn't the time to explain it, or, Harry raged silently in his mind, was the wizard leaving his boy deliberately in the dark, again?

Harry clenched shut his eyes and flopped back onto his mattress with a whump and the whine of old springs. What a lovely start to a summer vacation, he thought.

Just lovely.

XXX

Earlier that morning, before Albus Dumbledore had hurriedly put quill to parchment, a wizard named Edmund Westwood had sat beneath London and muttered into the front page of the Daily Prophet. "I can't believe it."

"Ooh, the dark lord's come back to life. Break out the vanishing cabinets and pickled pumpkin rations." At the voice, Edmund looked behind him, warily, at the jovial face of his boss just in time to watch the wizard to replace it with a scathing glare. Big Wallace folded his bulging arms. "Get back to work, you fool," he snapped.

Edmund smacked the paper with back of his hand. "Man, have you got no sense of priority?"

"You bet I do. Get back to work, or you're fired." Big Wallace grabbed the paper from Edmund and stalked off with it.

"Bloody slavedriver," Edmund muttered. With a sigh, he straightened, leaving his impromptu seat on a chunk of marble rubble, and shook out the back of his robes to knock loose some of the glittery white rock dust that seemed to be everywhere that morning in the Ministry of Magic's atrium. He snapped out a spell, vanishing the rock. After glancing about the small, cordoned-off area for any remaining rubble and finding none, he walked through the glow of the ward wall. A scratch of his wand against it as he went sent it collapsing with a puff. Instantly, he was surrounded by Ministry workers as the press of people shifted course to fill the new empty space. He shouldered through a clutch of whispering aides. You-Know-Who, You-Know-Who, they seemed to be chanting fearfully.

Edmund took a bracing breath in as he stepped through the main ward wall that encircled the destroyed Fountain of Magical Brethren. He hopped over a gold severed centaur leg before stopping to survey the shattered fountain basin. The thing was a mess of cracks, except for a spot just off the center, where a large, circular slab stubbornly held together in one piece. He turned and caught sight of first Big Wallace frowning at him and then a familiar set of dark blue robes. "Oi, Petey!" he called. "Give me a hand with this piece of rock here, will yeh?" He pointed at the massive hunk at the center of the fountain. "It's too big to vanish in one go."

Peter Northman sauntered up. Partway there, he cast an amused glance back at their thundery boss, and then he whistled, impressed, after taking in the size of the rock. He nudged Edmund with one shoulder. "Big Wallace giving you trouble again, mate?" he asked.

Edmund ducked his head down and muttered, "The man's acting like it's all no big deal." He waved away Peter and jumped up on the marble slab. "No, no, I'll tackle the far end. 'Get back to work,' he says. Well, that's easy enough for him to say; he's pure wizard some ten generations back. I got me a Muggle mother-in-law. That's hard enough to survive without this blood supremacy bollocks on top of it."

Peter rolled his shoulders and unholstered his wand. "You're telling me," he laughed humorlessly. "Me sister married a muggleborn, yeah? Second she heard it was starting up again, she flooed him and their boys to the States. Wish I had that sort of money right about now, but with this job?"

"Hey now!" Edmund protested and shook a finger at his coworker. "Don't go mocking the fine profession of magical repair"—he lowered his voice—"Big Wallace would bash our heads in for speaking ill of his ladylove." He shook out his arms. He hated the big vanishings. If apparition felt like being sucked through a tiny tube, vanishing felt like being the tube. He looked over the stone one more time before leveling his wand. "Right, then. On three? One. Two. Three!"

In tandem, they called out, "Vanesco!" and Edmund's head snapped back as white flooded his vision. He lowered himself to the ground, feeling out with his hand for a safe place to sit and stick his head between his knees.

"Whoo! I'm dizzy," he heard Peter say.

"Oh, bugger," he muttered. He rubbed at his temples as he waited for his vision to clear. "That rock did not want moved."

"Edmund…"

"Must have had a sticking charm on it. Damn. I thought we told these Ministry punks to cancel all the charms in the demolition area. Everyone knows you can't push through heavy enchantments. Dammit!"

"Edmund!" Peter shouted.

He winced. "What?"

"Open your eyes, you dolt!"

Experimentally cracking open one eye, he groaned at the flood of light. Then things slowly swam into place. There was some sort of tiled flooring under the fountain. He turned his head about and squinted to try to see just what the blazes they had unearthed. Carefully, he lowered himself down. He needed to clutch at the edge of the remaining statue ledge and stretch out his arms, and, even then, he needed to drop down the last two feet into the hole.

Peter jumped in after him, eyes bugging. Edmund looked up, then down. "I don't get it. There's a floor buried ten feet under the current one…and it's bloody gorgeous!" He bent down. There were twining runes made up of gold, lapis lazuli, and both black and white marble. "What the Hell were they thinking, covering this all up?"

Peter made a strangled noise, and he looked up. Edmund cocked his head curiously. His coworker was making desperate motions towards something to his right. That, or having a seizure. Edmund turned. At the center of the spiraling rune pattern was a plain gray rock and lodged in it… His brows shot up. "What's this then?" He stepped forward to crouch and peer at the broadsword shining in the atrium's dusty light. "There's some sort of inscription here: 'Whoever so pulleth out this sword, Excalibur…' It can't be."

He looked up at Peter, who waved a hand helplessly and said, "Mate, I can feel the power that thing's giving off from here. What is…is that doing there under a bunch of gaudy statues?"

Edmund paused when he heard Big Wallace's tenor voice cut through the area, giving some order to some hapless chap. He shook his head. "No…no. I don't want to know," he replied. "All I know is, it's got to come out. That basin for the new fountain's got to go in today, or our jobs are gone up in flames faster than a Horntail can make toast." He muttered a scanning spell and used his wand to sweep it over the area. A golden wash appeared, flowing from the blade of sword to ripple over the stone and onto the floor. He squinted and barely made out tiny ward sigils linked like chain mail armor…made for an ant. He had never seen anything like it. The enchantment was impenetrable. "Too much magic," he muttered. "Can't vanish it out, and can't move the rock, so…" he trailed off and peered at the hilt. The runes were larger and indicated some kind of lock. As for the key, he could guess. "One of us has got to pull it out."

Peter shook his head, looking spooked. "Alright. You do it."

Edmund walked up to the small dais that sword rested on, then stopped.

"Pull it out," Peter prodded. After a minute, he frowned. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Edmund looked at his fried with a panicked grin. "I just realized, man. If this thing comes out, that makes me King of England, doesn't it?"

"Good point. Right, then." Peter stepped up and shooed Edmund off, saying, "I'll pull it out." He pulled back his robe sleeves and grasped the hilt.

Edmund waited and watched Peter tug and attempt to dislodge the blade from the sword. "It's not budging, Petey," he said eventually. He stepped up to the other side. "Let me have a go." He gave an experimental tug, then braced himself and heaved. He gave it another minute before stepping back with a disappointed sigh. "Nope. Nothing. I have to go tell Big Wallace there's an enchanted sword stuck in the middle of the bloody atrium. Well. It was nice knowing you."

"No, I'll do it." Peter clapped him on the shoulder. "Your Jadis has got a baby on the way. You lose your job, and she'll kill you."

Edmund hmphed. "Point. Well. It was nice knowing you."

Peter chuckled before allowing his face to show his slightly panicked expression. He hopped, caught a handhold on the top edge of the remaining fountain basin, and scrambled up. Edmund did the same and had retreated to a safe distance by the time Peter called out, "Boss! You better come see this!"

Big Wallace turned around, and Edmund wondered for the hundredth time if the man didn't have a bit of giant in there somewhere. "What is it now!" he boss bellowed as he stalked towards the hole to look where Peter was pointed. "Honest truth, lads, if one more thing with this job's gone wrong, I'll…oh my bloody soddin' hell."

Edmund's thoughts exactly.

* * *

_Hello, all. This is my story, _Sword from the Stone_. I have a certain love of prologues because you can fill them with interesting characters that are never to be seen again. Canon purists are likely to hate me for it. In my defense, in the beginning there was Harry, Fawkes in passing, and Dumbledore's handwriting , so I hope you'll forgive dear Edmund Westwood, Peter Northman, Big Wallace, the unnamed sister, the dreaded Muggle mother-in-law, and the expecting Jadis Westwood for their brief, if humorously bumbling, existence. And, yes, C.S. Lewis; I ask his forgiveness, too. J.K. Rowling is merely thanked (very heartily, though) for her acceptance of fanfiction; upstanding lady, her._

_Next time: Harry discovers yet again that the Wizarding World has skipped ahead a chapter without telling him. He is, understandably, not happy in the slightest. Also: laryngitis attacks!_


	2. Burrow

The Dursleys had not been pleased to lose their free summer weed puller and window washer. Not at all. Harry had spun the upside of his sudden imprisonment to them for all it was worth ("Just think on it: no owls or freaks haunting the neighborhood!"), but he was still left with triple chores and little but molding grapefruit and white bread to eat for weeks.

Happy birthday to him. Perched on a sleeping bag in the one small corner of the attic he had managed to clear of all things Dursley, Harry took a vicious bite out of his stale crust.

After so many dark days of suffocating in exile up in the stuffed upper crawl spaces of Number Four Privet Drive, his current job assignment, he was starting to feel nostalgic for his cupboard.

A pounding from below startled him. "I don't hear working up there!" came Vernon Dursley's voice. Harry groaned, grabbed the single torch he had been allowed, and shuffled on his knees back over to the boxes upon boxes of Dudley's baby toys. They were the ones he had schlepped down the rickety attic stairs for Petunia to sort and toss or give to charity…presumably. Funny how all of them had ended up in the keep pile for him to carry back up again.

A lot of new items were making their way up into the attic as well. Harry had the sneaking suspicion that the Dursleys were crafting a windowless prison for him out of their own boxed junk. With the house below cleaned, by him, to a state where it wouldn't dare to get dusty for the next decade, it wasn't like they needed him any longer.

The way he figured it, they would starve him completely for three days before crumbling a couple dozen sleeping pills into a cup of chocolate pudding and leaving it by the edge of the pull-down stair like rat poison for wizards. Then, with him safely conked out for the next week, they would shove him to the back and stack all the boxes around him. After that, all they needed to do was play loud films on the telly until he grew too weak to shout, and then they could just forget about him altogether. Twenty odd years from then, some intrepid young couple, having bought the house at an estate sale, would discover his bones in the course of tossing the attic's entire contents.

Of course, Harry reflected as he shoved a stuffed pig into a box already past capacity, that could just be his internal Moody speaking.

XXX

Three days later, the Dursleys had not systematically starved Harry, nor had there been pudding or any conspicuous foods beyond the usual spoiling grapefruit and Wonderbread. What did come to pass Harry hadn't dreamed of in any of his paranoid musings.

A cool hand on his shoulder woke the boy from a doze. On automatic reflex, he groped for his glasses and put them on. That accomplished, he turned over blearily on the sleeping bag and saw but did not fathom the sight of Arthur Weasley crouched over him with a wand lighting up the attic's darkness. Then he gained full consciousness and bolted upright with a start. He was rewarded with a sharp knock of his head against a low beam of the house's sloped roof.

"Oof!"

"Watch it there, son," Mr. Weasley said, his voice soft as a whisper. Harry squinted at him. It sounded like Ron's dad, but he still couldn't quite believe it.

"Mr. Weasley," he said. "I didn't hear you come in."

"You were asleep."

Harry carefully scooted away from slope of the roof and towards his worn out trainers and, coincidentally, the loose floorboard where he was currently hiding his wand. "Well, yeah, but there's generally loads of shouting when wizards show up at the door." And screeching. And blubbering. And chubby hands attempting to protect a backside the size of a barrel. Yet the house below lay quiet.

"True," granted the possible impostor. "However, given the circumstances, we thought it best to fly under the, erm, sonar is it? Alastor put up muffling charms as we came in. You'll notice that however large a noise you make, it won't be more than a murmur."

"Alastor? Moody's here?" Carefully shifting the loose board, Harry dipped his fingers down into the hole in search of his wand.

"Downstairs," replied the man who hopefully wasn't polyjuiced. Harry felt there had been enough of that to last a lifetime, thank you. "Keeping your relatives company. Oh, my. This is simply marvelous! …What is it?"

Harry relaxed as Mr. Weasley, clearly the real article, moved away so he could poke at his new distraction: Petunia's broken sewing machine. He tucked the wand into his pocket after rising to his feet, not that Arthur noticed.

"So many small parts," the wizard mused. "They all seem too…another time, Arthur, old boy." He shook his head, as though to drive off a million questions like they were nothing more than buzzing flies. "Harry, we'd best gather your things quickly. It's short notice, but they're not looking at the moment, and we may not get another shot. Hurry up, now."

Bewildered and a little alarmed at that cryptic statement, Harry let Arthur usher him out of the attic and into Dudley's second bedroom, where an adult's wand make quick work of the packing. They trudged down the stairs together, and there Harry was presented with the novelty of an eggplant-faced Vernon hurling obscenities at Mad-Eye Moody with all the volume of a laryngitis victim. Or, at least he thought the words were obscene. He had to strain his hearing to make out any of the near-silent tirade.

"So there you are, Potter," suddenly said Moody, softly, without turning around, but it was 'Mad-Eye,' so Harry could hardly be surprised. "Enjoying your summer? Forgetting all sorts of lessons? Including that wizards can hide behind polyjuice and glamour? Didn't think to confirm our identities, did you? I've said it before, boy, and I'll say it again: CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

Harry blinked. Thanks to the muffling spell, the usually fearsome shout had come out as a…squeak. Despite his rising ire, Harry had to try very hard then to keep a straight face.

XXX

An hour later, at the end of a six-portkey gauntlet, Harry's wand arm was twitching, and he was ready to test the constancy of Moody's vigilance. His was not a pleasant mood. He was exhausted and nauseous. His first look at the sky in days had informed him that his internal clock had spun madly out of control during his time in the attic. Proof positive: he had been taking an afternoon nap at two in the morning. Luckily, though—for Moody—the sixth portkey dropped the trio into the backyard of a quaint, looming country house stacking precariously on top of itself into the sky: the Burrow.

Harry was maneuvered up the rickety stairs and past a snoring Ron to a cot on the floor. After eight days of nothing but a threadbare sleeping bag over a bug infested attic floor, Harry was in heaven. He dropped onto the cot with a thud, and whether he lost consciousness before or immediately after would remain a mystery forever.

Morning, of course, came all too quickly. Harry was thoroughly pounced by the Weasley twins when they noticed him asleep in their house. Blessedly, someone in the household drank coffee and had brewed extra. It was strong stuff, possibly Turkish, and Harry found himself blinking dazedly over his cup at an equally bleary and cup possessing Hermione at the kitchen table.

Ron, Fred, and George were all elbow deep into a basket of muffins when Ginny entered the room, slippered, her hair mussed from sleep. Without a word, she dropped into an empty chair, noticed Harry, and stole his coffee out from under him.

"Morning, your Highness," the twins chorused at her.

A terrifying transformation followed. Suddenly awake, Ginny whipped about in her seat to snap, "Shut up!" at the twins before swiveling back to Harry. "Ignore them," she insisted. "It's been the same joke all summer, and"—she raised her voice to Molly Weasley decibel levels— "WE'RE SICK OF IT!"

"Speak for yourself," one twin snorted.

"It gets funnier ever time," the other said with a smirk, then paused fractionally so the pair could chirp in unison, _"Your Highness!"_

Ginny banged her head down on the table. "Ugh. I give up." Harry took the opportunity to snatch his coffee back from her and down it. Without it, he wasn't sure he would survive the coming Weasley madness.

Sure enough, Fred took hold of the conversation. "So guess who went to pull it yesterday," he demanded, then, without preamble, gave the answer: "Old Widow Murple."

Ron snorted violently into his pumpkin juice.

Hermione bit her lip. "You don't mean that horrible old woman down in the village with the…" she scrunched her elbows against her sides and waved her hands about in what Harry thought was a passable impression of a T-Rex. At the Weasley children's nods, she slapped a hand over her mouth and dissolved into giggles.

Ginny was tearing up. "Oh, Merlin. What if she had pulled it up? Can you imagine?"

_"We decree that all children be silencioed at birth,"_ said George in a snippy, nasally voice. _"Furthermore, kneazles are to be worshipped as gods, and dirty fingernails are hitherto an offense deserving of Azkhaban. Now fetch me my gin and tonic."_

Harry looked around him as the table broke down into hysterics. "What are you talking about?" he asked at last. "Who's this Widow Murple, and pull what up? What is there to pull?"

Silence. Harry tensed at the eyes suddenly on him. They were all remembering the last time he had been dropped off near the end of the summer without a clue. They were also remembering Harry's rather spectacular explosion at the discovery.

Except Fred, that is. "Great Merlin, Harry!" he said. "They really do bury you under a rock during the summer, don't they? You've got to be the only wizard on the planet that doesn't…"

Harry shot up from his seat and slammed his hands on the table. "Fred, God as my witness, if you don't tell me what you're all on about right now, I will go dark lord on your arse!"

"They dug up Excalibur in the Ministry, and now the country's in limbo until someone pulls it out so the government can shift back into a monarchy."

"Fred, this isn't the time for a bloody joke." A hand prodded his shoulder. "What, Hermione!" She shoved the newspaper into his hands. He looked at the front page picture. "Oh." Then: "…King Arthur was real!"

The girl oh so reasonably replied, "Well, Merlin was, wasn't he, so why not?" to which he gave an aggravated sigh that blew up his fringe.

"Well," he groused, "yet again the Wizarding World has skipped ahead a chapter without telling me. Are there any other startling revelations about muggle misconceptions you're waiting to spring on me? Oh, don't tell me: Old St. Nick is really Dumbledore's cousin and lives in fear of Hermione unleashing SPEW on his workshop elves. Or how about the Tooth Fairy? The Loch Ness Monster? Elvis?"

Ron, after swallowing his mouthful of muffin, raised one finger. "Actually?"

Harry stared at the Burrow's kitchen ceiling, refusing to even look in the boy's direction. "Ron, I don't want to hear it. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around Excalibur. How would that even work? I mean, we've already got a royal family."

"You honestly think Death Eaters and You-Know-Who are going to bow and scrape to a bunch of muggles?" Ginny asked reasonably.

"Well, when you put it that way…"

"It's actually quite a pickle," Hermione cut in. "The sword disappeared long before the Statute of Secrecy came into effect in 1692, so technically whoever pulls it out becomes ruler of England and in effect the whole UK, but practically, he or she would run just magical Britain. And Ireland."

"Oh, is that all?" Harry slumped down into his seat and let his head sink into his hands. He was officially spent. "Let's start over, completely. Ginny is now Her Highness, and this is funny because?"

"Well, when I tried to pull the sword out, it…" Ginny trailed off and waggled her hand from side to side.

George grinned. "She wiggled it. The Malfoys were there. Mum and son just about keeled over together on the spot. Sword didn't pull out, though. Shame. Our fair princess unable to fulfill her destiny as king!"

Ginny glared, and Harry wisely chose to divert the conversation while there were still two twins breathing. "So, uh, why did it…wiggle?"

Hermione perked up. A perfect diversion, if they survived the upcoming lecture. "Well there's a few theories," she began. "One is that the sword is looking for specific qualities, and Ginny is close but not quite a perfect match. Her magic is likely in close but not perfect harmony with the sword's natural energy…."

Fortunately, before the girl could dive into a full analysis of the issue, Ginny rolled her eyes and said, "There's Hermione, treating great magic like an arithmancy quiz equation. It means it likes me but doesn't really like me." She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms in a huff, with an odd look in Harry's direction. "Story of my bloody life."

Fred sighed theatrically, propping his head up on one hand. "At least you got a good story out of it. All the rest of us got was red in the face and sprained shoulders."

Harry looked around the room, eyes narrowing. He one wrong statement from repeating last summer's screaming fit about the unfairness of it all. "So," he asked, "You've all been to see _the _Excalibur and give it a go?"

Hermione sighed. "If only. I was in France on holiday until two days ago. My parents aren't going to forgive me any time soon. Every vacation photo has me with my nose stuck in a book or a copy of the Daily Prophet."

Ron snorted. "And that's different from normal, how?"

"So tell me, Ron," she said in return with a sweet smile, "how was it when you tried your luck?"

Ron mumbled something.

George pulled out an extendable ear from somewhere. "Speak up, Ronnikins! We can't hear you!"

Ron glared. Hermione spoke for him. "Ron hasn't gone, either. He's been grounded, for shall we say less than spectacular marks. We had better pray he did better on his OWLS than on the 5th year coursework, or…"

"Stuff it, Hermione!"

"I'm just saying your study habits could use work."

"I'd do better if any of the stuff we're supposed to learn was actually useful. I mean, really, what's the point of turning a porcupine into a pincushion, anyway?

"It's a building exercise, Ron!"

"To what?" the redhead snapped. "Oh, of course: turtles into teapots! Why didn't I see it before? We need all the teapots we can get, what with the plague of turtles just falling from the sky and the absolutely devastating shortage of tea in Great Britain. How would we Englishmen ever survive without that handy spot of transfiguration?"

Hermione opened her mouth, snapped it shut, then opened it again with a sniff. "Sometimes I don't know why I bother. Nice to have you back, Harry. If you need me, I'll be off…wasting my life on learning pointless theoretical exercises!" With that, she gathered what looked like notes for a summer Potions essay and stalked out of the kitchen.

Ron, after grabbing a final piece of toast, also stalked out, huffing. However, he left the house altogether, banging through the kitchen door, presumably in the direction of the Weasley children's quidditch orchard.

Sitting among the remaining and equally flabbergasted Weasley children, Harry blinked. He looked first to the door from which Ron had made his exit, second to the adjoining dining room through which Hermione had disappeared, and finally to the spot where Charlie Weasley had mysteriously appeared. The man was leaning against the counter with his sleepy, bemused lips parted around a chipped coffee mug and a fresh burn scar peeking through the laces of his nightshirt. The dragon tamer caught Harry's gaze, finished swallowing, and commented dryly, "It's times like these that make me think the wrong brother's getting married."

* * *

A/N: Poor Harry. I think I overloaded him. There was also an ungodly amount of dialogue in this, so I may have overloaded the readers, too, but humor was attempted in spades, and when that failed, Charlie Weasley was summoned forth in all his sleep-tousled glory. On another note, thanks for all the story alerts, guys. Always good to be wanted.

Next time: Harry reacts. Well, that might be too soft a term. Explodes would be too soft, actually. Ducking is suggested.


	3. The Hollow Doll

_Hello again. Hobby writing and the last semester of university apparently don't mix…sorry. I have a life again, though, so let's get cracking._

* * *

Harry blinked at Charlie. Married? He closed his eyes. His fingers curled to dig into his palms. It was just another example of 'let's leave Harry out of the loop,' he tried to reason, but for some reason, this one had sliced somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. He was used to everyone just assuming he knew the Wizarding World's twisted ins and outs. He'd even resigned himself to the whole universe clamming up the second he might learn something useful about the madman hellbent on killing him. This was inane in comparison to that, but this…this was family.

"Which brother?" he asked in a chirp he couldn't quite control.

It was Charlie's turn to blink. "Bill, the lucky sod. You'd remember Fleur Delacour, of course."

Harry smiled. The mug sitting on the table before him rattled for a bare fraction of a second before he slammed a hand down to keep it still. He doubted anyone had noticed; he'd gotten quite good that summer at hiding the odd magical shakes around the Dursleys. "Fleur. Of course," he replied evenly. Only the girl he'd shared three harrowing, deadly experiences with; that was all. It would have been best to leave it there, but he couldn't stop himself. "I don't know much about Wizarding weddings, actually. The Muggle ones have all these rules and traditions. Do Witches go insane over the details, too?"

There was some groaning from the males for an answer, while Ginny's response more closely resembled a low hiss.

"It's not just the dress and the flowers, either. You wouldn't believe how much paper Muggles go through getting ready for wedding."

"Paper?" Fred repeated in mystification.

Something almost like hope unfurled in Harry chest. "You know," he said lightly. "Engagement announcements, wedding announcements, save the date cards, wedding invitations and wedding reception invitations…do Wizards not bother with all that?"

George grimaced. "If only. The happy couple showed at the start of the hols. Fleur had him locked up for days working on the announcement list. If the Statute of Secrecy didn't exist, they'd have told half the world."

Harry looked down at the mug. It was buzzing in his palm, the tremors riding up past his elbow. "…I see. Would you excuse me?" He lurched to his feet and walked out of the kitchen with the mug in a death grip. He missed seeing Ginny punch George's shoulder. If he'd still been in the room, he probably wouldn't have noticed. His world had boiled down to the shifting of feet and keeping the glazed ceramic in his hand from shattering. Then his feet stopped, and he looked up to stare at the door of a cupboard under the stairs.

The mug didn't shatter. It burst apart into dust and vicious, twisting light with a roar of violence given sound. If Harry started screaming, it wasn't loud enough to be heard over the air. It writhed and shrilled. It had sparkling teeth, and he wasn't sure whether he wanted it to devour him or the world. It might have lasted a minute. It might have gone on forever. Instead, there was an electric jolt that ran up from his soles that seized his entire body. Every muscle contracted, he toppled to the ground. The air had already been forced out of his lungs. Instead, on impact with the electrified floor, it was his thoughts that were forcibly expelled from his brain. The air went still all at once as he lay there, stupefied.

The shock ended, and he went limp. His eyes slid open. Charlie Weasley was crouched low in the hallway, his face stricken but his eyes watchful, his posture deathly professional, and the tip of his wand pressed firmly into the floor. Behind him, three red heads peered cautiously out of the kitchen doorway. There was a door slam and a skid of feet, and then a fourth—Ron's—joined them.

Harry's head lolled. His glasses had gone skew. He could see up the Burrow's haphazard set of stairs with one eye; the rest was fuzz. That was Hermione in the distance, the token brunette. Closer, there was a blonde. It was Fleur, eyes wide, an arm and a hip blocking the way of a concerned Bill Weasley who, despite the circumstances, Harry still thought was coolest looking man on the planet. Closest was Molly Weasley, standing frozen on the stair five steps from where he lay. Her hair was blown over her face and her lip was trembling. Her outstretched hand shook before stretching another inch towards him. He thought of being pulled into another, earlier embrace. He recoiled.

The front door was closest. He ran. The winding road towards Muggle civilization beckoned, but he faltered mid-sprint. Dumbledore had sad that it wasn't safe, that nothing could be trusted. So he banked hard to the left instead, around the house and into the shelter of the orchard. He ran until he tripped over a branch and tumbled into the long grass before a fallen tree knees first, breathless and hollow.

"Well, that was bracing," a panting voice said seconds later. Harry looked sideways in time to see the redhead he only knew vaguely from two years earlier drop down to perch on the log beside him. The man stuck out a tanned hand to help him up. "You do realize you could probably beat mum's howlers for sheer volume if you really put your mind to it? Bit of an amazing feat, that, really. You were with Ron for the Ford Angelina Incident, so I imagine you've heard her at her best."

With the adrenaline in him used up, Harry found himself blushing furiously and shying away from the proffered hand. "Sorry about…" he mumbled before trailing off, unable to name his behavior without making himself sound like a short-fused toddler.

Bill only shrugged. "No apologies necessary. We all need a release valve—don't tell Dad I know what that is! Mine is my matryoshka."

Harry had to blink at that. "I'm sorry. Your _what?_"he asked.

Bill reached into his robes and removed a wrapped bundle. "Here. Catch." Harry plucked it neatly from the air as it came at him thanks to his honed reflexes. Then he fumbled and dropped it with a gasp as it seemed to slither right out of his hand.

"Sorry!" Harry cried out, mortified, and reached to pick the small, surprisingly heavy object up and ensure it hadn't broken. The bundle slipped from his fingers like soap twice more before he managed to secure it in his grasp. "I'm not usually this butter-fingered," Gryffindor's seeker said feebly. "Honest." The ground could swallow him whole right then if it wanted, he decided; he wouldn't struggle.

Bill just smiled at him warmly. "I'm pretty impressed you managed to snag it this quickly. The cloth's cursed, sort of a tactile notice-me-not. Fingers slide right over it." His voice lowered conspiratorially. "I used to lay that little whammy on Charlie's practice snitch when the prat got too uppity about being the great quidditch prodigy of all Ottery St. Catchpole. …Well, go on. You can unwrap it now that you've got it."

Harry did as he was bidden and soon had a small Russian nesting doll lying in his hand. A matryoshka, he supposed. The redheaded figure handpainted on the wooden shell wore the costume and wide grin of a jester. Spotting a bit of detail on the underside, Harry turned it over and found another near-identical jester. He was reminded immediately of Fred and George. "Did you…make this?" he asked. He brushed a hand over one figure's checkered tunic. "It's beautiful."

"It's how I keep sane. Open it."

There was something far too sharp about those blue eyes, but they were also kind. Dubious, curious, Harry obeyed. Immediately and without knowing why, he broke into gales of laughter. The twins' wooden shells and the next doll waiting inside fell from his hands as he keeled over, clutching at his stomach. Bill caught him as he tipped. His robes were soft, which Harry found hilarious. The sound of his own giggling was funny. The shapes of the clouds in the sky, the log he was pulled to sit on, being abandoned for a sword stuck in a rock, _Voldemort…_Sirius. It all was suddenly hysterical.

He could have laughed for five minutes or an hour before he burst into tears, and it felt like years before he dissolved into hiccups that in the end were silenced by warm hands rubbing circles in his back. He felt wonderfully hollow inside, rather like a matryoshka himself, when he asked quietly, "What was that?" to Bill at last.

"Another curse," he was told. "Though it's rather soft, as curses go. The next doll confounds you as you open it if you don't figure out its trick first, and the ones after that get decidedly more nasty. I carve the dolls when I'm brooding and curse them when it all gets a bit much. I'm licensed to work all but the blackest of the black. Can't be a proper curse breaker unless I know how they're put together, after all. Haven't you got something you can do? Besides shouting until everyone goes deaf and the roof nearly caves in, of course."

Harry blinked slowly. The wind was blowing through the grass and laden apple trees of the field beyond in mysterious patterns, and it transfixed him. He was feeling so terribly, incredibly mellow. The world was tinged a perfectly reasonable blue. "That wasn't just a laughing curse, was it?" he asked.

Bill chuckled. "Ah, you're a sharp one. Aurors have that bit of magic on shackles for when they make arrests. It's much easier to handle a murderous wizard what can kill you with a snatched wand and a stray thought when he's giggling and docile as a baby lambkin. Now will you answer my question?"

Harry frowned. "I'm supposed to be offended by that. I think. And flying. I like flying."

"Flying can be a good stress reliever," Bill said mildly.

"Yes, but…"

"Yes, Harry?"

Harry took a breath. His voice was calm and measured, barely hitching at all as he explained, "But Umbridge stuck me with that lifetime flying ban, and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia live in the middle of the Muggle suburbs, and even if there was a field or clearing close enough to hike to so the Ministry doesn't expel me for breaking the Statue of Secrecy because they hate me, Voldemort's out there looking and Dumbledore all but wrote that I'd die if I went outside of their house, and I can't even fly here because Sirius gave me my broom, and he's dead, and it's my fault, and nobody even remembers him because they're all in love with their stupid sword. God, why am I saying this? I barely even know you."

Harry knew, somewhere inside, that he never would have said most of that if not for the curse. He would have choked on the words. Violently. Now here merely blinked slowly, all his words run out. Bill was silent for a beat longer than was comfortable. "That's quite a list," the curse-breaker said. "Tell you what: how about I lend you my broom and you go up with my gaggle of sibs after your limbs are done being jelly?"

Harry frowned. "That would be like forgetting him. I can't forget him, too."

"Not even for a second?"

This answer he managed not to give. "Can I stay like this, just for a while?" he hedged instead, angling his body away, avoiding eye contact but simultaneously leaning more heavily on the man. It felt almost like Mrs. Weasley's gentle warmth and almost like Sirius's few manic crushing hugs, so he could pretend for just a minute that Bill was his godfather the way he'd hoped the man would be and not the confused, half-cracked wizard he'd been given and lost instead. The pessimist in him spoke up, as always, trying to send him back to reality, but the wonderful fuzz in his head smothered that voice and told him everything was fine. "I don't want to be a bother," he said.

A rumble of laughter came from the chest beneath him. "We can stay as long as you like, Harry. This is saving me from planning my wedding." Harry frowned. That didn't sound quite like Sirius, though he supposed that a godmother would be nice. "It's rather like planning your own execution, so I recommend running to the hills whenever you can."

"You're good at hiding. In the hills."

Another rumble. "I'm crafty like that. Harry, you do know you gave everyone a fright, right? Magic cracking open like that...it's not safe."

Harry's face morphed into a slight frown. "I don't want to talk 'bout it."

"All right, but you should know that they are worried. They do care, Harry."

"They don't understand."

"Maybe not, but they'd like to."

"Shh, Siri. Wanna sleep."

And that's exactly what Harry proceeded to do as Bill sighed at the silent orchard, his tanned fingers itching to carve another, smaller matryoshka. To still them, the Weasley son curled his hand around a sturdy branch of the fallen log. Eyes narrowing, he turned to look at it properly and decided that, yes, it was just about the right size for the design that was coming together in his mind in time to Harry Potter's breathing.

* * *

to be continued...

_I take a certain sadistic pleasure in cracking open characters like walnuts. This was also a very delayed response to the start of book 6. Harry's last remaining shot at a real family fell through a billowing black hole of death, he's immediately left with the most unsympathetic people on the planet for months, and when he finally gets back to people he cares about, they're all, "Hey, now that you're, uh, here, let us complain about how horrible a functioning family dynamic is and hit you over the head with the fact that unlike you we get to have love lives, petty dramas, and a shot at happily ever after." ...And he's okay with this? Let's play Quidditch, go to the Twin's joke emporium, and stalk Malfoys? Um, what? The book 5 Harry volcano was much more realistic, thanks._

_See you all soon._


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